PJ Harvey

Black, white + spot UV hand printed screen print onto gig poster

605mm x 895mm

Edition of 25

Lucy McLauchlan’s piece erases everything but PJ Harvey’s face from the original poster - an act of abstraction that becomes preservation. In doing so, she allows PJ’s raw, theatrical presence to linger like smoke in a cathedral. This gig marked a mature, darkly iconic phase in Harvey’s journey. Her haunting photo - taken in a bathtub in her home on St. Luke’s Road in Totterdown (a stones throw from where we are right now) - cements the deeply local ties between performer and place, making this artwork a visual hymn to both.

“It’s PJ Harvey, so the only thing to do was to let her shine. Maybe I should’ve kept the apple. But the apple hasn’t played an important part of my adolescence like PJ Harvey and Bristol have.”

Lucy McLauchlan